Part B News Features
Question: How has the 2026 Medicare physician fee schedule final rule, effective Jan. 1, 2026, affected coding of advanced primary care management (APCM)?... More
Recent changes mandated by Congress and CMS that boost the status of physician assistants (PA) — or physician associates, as some groups prefer — is another sign that the providers formerl... More
Of the top 15 codes that practices reported with modifier 59 (Distinct procedural service), only a handful saw positive movement in denial rates between 2023 and 2024, and lesion-destruction codes o... More
Question: How has the 2026 Medicare physician fee schedule final rule, effective Jan. 1, 2026, affected coding of advanced primary care management (APCM)?... More
Recent changes mandated by Congress and CMS that boost the status of physician assistants (PA) — or physician associates, as some groups prefer — is another sign that the providers formerl... More
Of the top 15 codes that practices reported with modifier 59 (Distinct procedural service), only a handful saw positive movement in denial rates between 2023 and 2024, and lesion-destruction codes o... More
Tools
Find the latest list of designated health services (DHS) that are subject to the Stark physician self-referral rule’s restriction on referrals. The new list went into effect Jan. 1, 2026.
Get a head start on revisions to codes in the E/M, cardiovascular, radiology and medicine chapters of the 2026 CPT Manual. The following chart contains the current and revised long descriptors for codes that CMS released in the proposed 2026 Medicare physician fee schedule and intends to assign an active (A) payment status
Benchmark of the Week
Of the top 15 codes that practices reported with modifier 59 (Distinct procedural service), only a handful saw positive movement in denial rates between 2023 and 2024, and lesion-destruction codes once again fronted the list.
CMS’ Open Payments website has undergone a makeover, and its latest (2024) numbers for payments to physicians from “applicable manufacturers or applicable GPOs” (including drug and device manufacturers) are available there. More money changed hands in 2024 than in 2018, the earliest year for which numbers are publicly available. But it may be less than you expected.
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